by Linsey Hall
“Isn’t that weird?” I asked. “It should be locked.”
“Normally, yes.” She raced up the stairs to my flat, flinging open the door.
I followed her. As soon as I peeked my head in, a chorus of voices shouted, “Surprise!”
I blinked.
My flat had been decorated, albeit in a haphazard fashion. Furniture of all different styles and colors filled the space, as well as crazy artwork on the walls featuring colorful animals.
Eve and Quinn stood inside. The witches I’d met last week, Beth, Coraline, and Mary, were also there, dressed in insane ensembles of feathers and colorful leather. It was a cool look. Cordelia sat on the couch, looking pleased as punch.
Balloons decorated the walls, and they all held glasses of champagne.
I grinned. “What is this?”
“Surprise party!” Eve said. “Your official welcome to town. We got you a few things for your place.” She turned and gestured to a sign. “And also this.”
The plaque was dark wood carved with scrolled white writing that read, Carrow Burton: Supernatural Sleuth.
Mac smiled. “We didn’t know exactly what to call you, since your power is kind of weird. But you’re good at solving mysteries, and I’d say that this last one was enough to prove you’re ready to open your own shop.”
“Wow.” Tears pricked my eyes. “Thanks, guys.” I walked to the sign and touched the edge. “This is way better than being a detective.”
Quinn laughed. “Let’s get you a glass of champagne.”
I turned to my friends, happiness blooming inside me. My flat looked lovely, and though I still didn’t know exactly where I was going to hang up my new shingle, I was excited to get started.
~~~
I hope you liked Wicked Deal! Book three will be here next month.
While you wait, have you read the deleted scene that takes place between books one and two (hint: Carrow goes to Grey’s club to ask him why he brought her those books)? If not, check it out here.
THANK YOU FOR READING!
I hope you enjoyed reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it. Reviews are so helpful to authors. I really appreciate all reviews, both positive and negative. If you want to leave one, you can do so at Amazon or GoodReads.
Acknowledgments
Thank you, Ben, for everything. There would be no books without you.
Thank you to Jena O’Connor, Lexi George, and Ash Fitzsimmons for your excellent editing. The book is immensely better because of you!
Thank you to Orina Kafe for the beautiful cover art.
For Jackson
Author’s Note
Hey there! I hope you enjoyed Wicked Deal. Most of the historical elements from this book were inspired by research trips to Romania and London. Some tidbits are too interesting not to share, but I don’t want to bog down the book with them either, so I like to share them here in the author’s note.
As I mentioned in the Author’s Note for Once Bitten, Guild City and its guild towers were inspired by the town of Sighișoara in Transylvania, Vlad the Impaler’s birthplace. It is an utterly beautiful, charming city that I wish I could have spent more time in.
There were many amazing parts of Sighișoara that did not make it into that book, including the Church on the Hill. The scene in Wicked Deal in which Carrow and Grey climb the narrow steps to the church to look for Mariketta’s crypt is based upon a church built in Sighișoara between 1429 and 1488.
In real life, it sits on a hill at the edge of Sighișoara, accessed by a set of stairs covered by a peaked wooden roof. They were build in 1642 to keep the snow off children as they climbed to a school near the church.
Inside the church, I invented the priest’s office with the secret key. However, the crypt is based upon the one at the real church, which is accessed via a door inset into the floor near the front of the church. It is the only example of an ancient crypt in Transylvania, and it has been vandalized several times by thieves attempting to break into the crypts to find valuables. That damage is not easily seen now, however. The paintings on the interior walls of the church date to the 14th-16th centuries and are some of the rarest and most valued murals in Transylvania.
The restaurant owned by the Dwarves’ Guild is based upon one that we visited in Brașov, a larger town about a three hours from Sighișoara. There were many underground restaurants and tunnels in Brașov, which were the inspiration for the ones in Guild City. Brașov was also the inspiration for the town that contained La Papillon and The Crescent Hotel.
As for the London Underground, the other inspiration for the Dwarves’ territory, one must have a bit of a flexible imagination for how I laid that out. The bombed-out portions of the Tube that were destroyed in the Blitz are probably not so easily accessible today, but for the purposes of the story, the Dwarves have used magic to connect them to other parts of the Tube.
I borrowed two Victorian urban legends for the Underground. The first is that of Spring-Heeled Jack, a shadowy villain who lurked the streets of London. He first appeared in 1837, leaping out at a woman and tearing at her clothes with his claws. Later, he chased a carriage and leapt over a nine foot wall, hence the name. For roughly ten years, he was part of life in London, the product of superstition, mass hysteria, and newspaper stories that ignited the imaginations of Londoners.
The pigs of the Underground are another urban legend from the mid-19th century. During this time, the sewers were a relatively new invention in London. As such, they ignited the peoples’ imaginations. According to the story, a sow managed to escape into the sewers, where she had a litter of pigs. The pig family survived off the scraps that were continually washed into the sewer, and it was said that one day they would escape and run rampant through the city.
Black Church in Guild City is based off of the real Black Church that sits in the center of Brașov. It is an impressively imposing structure with a blackened exterior. Construction began between 1383 and 1385 on the initially-Romance Catholic structure, but it wasn’t completed until after 1476. During the Protestant reformation, the church was transitioned over to Lutheran services. After invading Hapsburg forces set fire to the church in 1689, the exterior became blackened. Hence the name Black Church (Biserica Neagră in Romanian). For the story, I invented the entire interior, along with the dungeons that connect to the underground.
La Papillon, the posh bar that Carrow and Grey visited, was based on a secret bar accessed via a nearly hidden staircase in Brașov. Though that bar was far smaller than the one that I wrote, I loved the idea of a hidden speak-easy type bar for this book and so modified it to fit the story.
That’s it for the history and myth in this book, though I will go into more detail about the very cool guild towers in future books. Thank you for reading, and I hope you stick around with Carrow and Grey for the rest of their adventures!
About Linsey
Before becoming a writer, Linsey Hall was a nautical archaeologist who studied shipwrecks from Hawaii and the Yukon to the UK and the Mediterranean. She credits fantasy and historical romances with her love of history and her career as an archaeologist. After a decade of tromping around the globe in search of old bits of stuff that people left lying about, she settled down and started penning her own romance novels. Her Dragon’s Gift series draws upon her love of history and the paranormal elements that she can't help but include.
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All reference to events, persons, and locale are used fictitiously, except where documented in historical record. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright 2020 by Linsey Hall
Published by Bonnie Doon Press LLC
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form, except in instances of quotation used in critical articles or book review. Where such permission is sufficient, th
e author grants the right to strip any DRM which may be applied to this work.
ISBN 978-1-942085-99-7
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